District Representatives Overrule Finance Committee to Save High School Sports and Marching Uniforms
The town meeting continued its austerity drive last night to produce a 1978-79 school budget of approximately $10.7 million, leaving the $11.3 million school committee proposal in disarray. The school administration has stated that cuts of this magnitude would force school consolidation by the closing of one of the seven elementary schools, which has been the ultimate goal of the finance commission for months of aggressive campaigning and pressuring. The most substantial of the cuts, including about $375,000 in teacher salaries, had been made in the fourth session Monday night, and cuts amounting to about $126,000 last night seemed almost anticlimactic. Attendance was down both in the town meeting membership and the spectator gallery. No official tally was available but the total budget cuts proposed by a relentless finance commission and made willingly by town meeting in the fourth session Monday and last night amounted to more than $600,000. As engineered by the finance commissioners, cuts were made throughout the school budget and intended to reflect savings from the closing of one school. Formal reconsideration of the budget is possible since town meeting will continue in a sixth session on other town operations budgets at 8 tonight but, some school officials think, this is unlikely and pointless given the mood. The Norwood Teachers Association will file a 10-taxpayer suit as soon as town meeting is over to recover the school budget cuts voted by town meeting, association president Richard King said this morning. He said he did not know whether the suit would be filed in Norfolk or Suffolk Superior Court. He noted that the Massachusetts Teachers Association would be filing the suit on the Norwood association’s behalf.
The fifth session of the annual Town of Norwood town meeting required a number of standing votes as district representatives critically completed action to remodel the school budget. Attendance dwindled last night with fewer than 140 members recorded on two tallied votes and no more than 75 in the spectator gallery. Despite the continuing assault on the school budget and the three-and-a-half-hour session, school committee Chairman Henry W. Diggs’ sense of humor was still intact. Asked his reaction to what seemed to be a final FinCom victory, Diggs remarked with a grin and understatement, “It’s a bad scene.” As to whether his committee would seek reconsideration tonight, Diggs remarked, “I feel as though we’d get clobbered.” Going to court to seek restoration of the budget—something he has done only twice in his 18-year tenure—Diggs said is something he could not speculate on until the committee meets to consider alternatives. No meeting has been called and the regular weekly meeting tonight will be postponed, Diggs said. At least two school committee members approached after the adjournment felt that the best prospects might lie at a subsequent special town meeting. Favoring a special town meeting over court action to reach some compromises on the $600,000-plus in cuts, Joseph M. Pentowski remarked, “I think reasonableness can still prevail.” While Judith Berkowitz, like Pentowski, declined to say if she accepts the town meeting drafted budget as an irrevocable mandate, she was specific on how the administration should respond. The school committee should insist, Mrs. Berkowitz said, that the administration prepare plans to consolidate two of the elementary schools and “make an honest attempt to be as austere as we can.” Mrs. Berkowitz also said she did not want to go to court for reinforcement of committee fiscal autonomy authority under state law. On the other hand, the school department must meet its contractual obligation, she noted in a general comment. But, reconsideration during this annual town meeting, she deemed pointless, remarking, “The mood of town meeting is quite clear.”
Following the FinCom lead, the town meeting made cuts in these four budget sections: $34,500 from the $484,500 school administration proposal; $55,000 cut from the proposed $205,000 budget for buildings maintenance; $25,046 from the $55,046 for new equipment capital outlay and $11,590 out of the $31,590 proposed for equipment repairs and replacements. Contested motions of the finance commission which the school committee agreed upon during budget review were $33,814 for auxiliary agency incidentals, which includes library books and nursing supplies; $71,990 for continuing fees and services, which includes testing programs, high school graduation and microfilming records; $100,000 for grounds maintenance; $271,020 for buses and $350,150 for certain Chapter 766 program operational expenses. The mention of typewriters in any program became a joke of sorts as debate got bogged down at one point, prompting James A. Lightizer Jr. of District 2 to quip, “I think the only way they’re going to get new typewriters is put it in the athletic budget.”
The school committee, which failed to win overrides of finance commission recommendations during the fourth session, won a couple of budget victories last night. The school athletics budget was appropriated at $90,694 instead of the $62,000 the finance commission recommended. Athletic Director Arthur Gulla was on the firing line during extensive debate on why the $90,694 should be appropriated for the athletic program rather than the $62,000 the FinCom favored. There was differences of opinion whether the athletics revolving account of roughly $10,000 should be considered separate or part of the athletics budget. The current athletic program lists an approximate $57,000 town appropriation and $10,000 revolving account balance or overall program funds of $67,000. Defending the rather substantial increase, Gulla said that $61,500 of his budget is in fixed costs. New regulation helmets cost $4,300 while replacing ancient baseball uniforms entails another $4,077 expenditure, he added. The athletic program serves approximately 1,600 youths throughout the school system, Gulla reported, and entails 67 teams of various kinds on the secondary school level. To support the FinCom recommendation, Gulla cautioned, “could wipe out the entire junior high program. If the money is not there, you can’t run the programs in the red,” he reminded school representatives.
Gulla and the athletic program received mixed comments during debate. Edmund G. Linehan of District 5 was not alone when he spoke critically that the athletic budget seemed disproportionately weighted in favor of the “jocks” rather than less intense, intramural players. A fraction of the budget for intramurals is “ludicrous” attention given “all those that aren’t jocks,” Linehan contended. Later, he said, “I find it interesting we’re buying hockey sticks and not pencils for the kids.” Gulla’s answer, however, was that while intramurals are a part of the elementary school program “the interest wasn’t there” at the high school level. Selectmen Chairman Martin J. Lydon cited the “boredom and anger” sociologists have found causes vandalism and the loss of many ball fields once available to local youth during the town growth since the 1940s in supporting the full request. “We do owe them something,” Lydon said. “We’ve got to give them an alternate lifestyle. I’m suggesting that we’ve got to give them programs.” The school committee’s proposed override of the FinCom recommendation passed in a preliminary vote, 68-66. Before final action on the budget, FinCom Chairman William F. Collins reminded town meeting representatives “that is a sizeable increase.” He suggested that “the kitchen is getting a little hot” and that some were beginning to back down on pressing for cuts. The full $90,694 request passed on a final 73-58 vote.
The town meeting forgot its parsimonious ways again on the music budget as Mrs. Berkowitz almost single-handedly won town meeting support for $37,500 to outfit the marching band. The FinCom recommended $5,000 while the school committee was seeking $10,000 — double the finance commission recommendation — but added an extra $37,500 for marching band uniforms. The difference was largely to cover purchases of the more expensive instruments and protective cases. Mrs. Berkowitz, backed by the only other woman member of the school committee, Joan H. Cuff, spoke persuasively. “I have a commitment to make to 250 kids,” she said. “Who are wearing uniforms absolutely pathetic.” Referring to new uniforms provided for under the athletics budget, Mrs. Berkowitz remarked. “Well tell me why we don’t provide uniforms for the band—good ones so the kids don’t catch pneumonia.” Mrs. Berkowitz received endorsement of Finance Commissioner E. Peter Bamber, one of the architects of the school budget cuts, which undoubtedly boosted her case. Bamber noted how the highly acclaimed high school marching band represents a face of the town to other communities.
Archival Note: This article has been dynamically reconstructed from the original public record print archives of the Patriot Ledger
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